


Out Of the Mouths Of Babes

by springsdandelion (writergirlie)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/springsdandelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss's daughter begins to ask the hard questions that Katniss has been dreading for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out Of the Mouths Of Babes

She’s six when she first brings up the Hunger Games.

 

She doesn’t refer to them by name, of course; officially, children aren’t to learn about them in school until the fourth grade at the earliest—when the teachers feel they’re mature enough to handle the graphic material that’s already drastically toned down for a more sensitive audience—but that doesn’t stop the little ones from talking about it on the playground before then: bits and pieces of it, for the most part, taken out of context and sometimes distorted and grossly exaggerated, and other times, frighteningly close to the mark.

 

I’m not sure which versions the girl has been exposed to, but when she alludes to it one day in passing, it takes me entirely by surprise.

 

It starts at the kitchen table, when I’m brushing her hair. Sundays are a rare chance to rest from the tumult of the week in the Mellark household, the only day when Peeta’s bakery closes early—just before noon, when the brunch rush finally slows—and we fill a basket with warm cheese buns, homemade raspberry preserves, and a few bottles of orange-flavored fizzy water that Effie sends over from the Capitol every few weeks or so, after discovering that the girl took a liking to it after her last visit, and we set up a family picnic by the lake, which lasts until the sun has dipped out of sight in the blur of the horizon.

 

She insists that I braid her hair—two braids, not just one, because “that’s the way Daddy likes it”—and I comply readily, because I never seem to be able to refuse any requests from my children. She still smells of the honey-and-lavender soap from her bath, fresh and clean like the meadow she’s so fond of running around in, and I’m inhaling the scent, thinking of the laughter that will soon tickle my ears, once she and her brother are set free to wade ankle-deep in the water, chasing minnows that nip at their toes.

 

I don’t notice at all that she’s been looking down at my forearm as I tie a ribbon at the end of the first braid.

 

“Mama,” she says, in that sweet voice that always hits me square in the chest, “is that from when they forced you to play?”

 

She jabs gently at the noticeable crater in my skin, where Johanna Mason had once cut me open to scoop out the tracking chip. Her tiny fingers skim over the surface of the scar, tracing its outline, then smoothing over its puckered surface, and it’s all I can do not to shudder from the sudden chill that’s raked up my spine.

 

“Yes,” I finally say. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to answer the question at all, but she’s looking up at me with those eyes, with that same look that has the power to strip me bare when it’s her father that’s giving it, and I know I owe her the truth. I owe her the effort to try and help her understand what I still struggle to make sense of, almost two decades later.

 

When I first learned I was pregnant with her, I remembered having a vivid dream—several dreams, actually—of a precocious little girl, full of curiosity about things I’ve spent half a lifetime trying to bury deep down, armed with difficult questions I just don’t have good answers for. Or don’t even want to find the answers for.

 

I knew this day would come, eventually. In a way, I’ve been bracing myself for it ever since I first felt her kick, ever since I held her in my arms and she closed her fist around my finger. Peeta assured me that when the time came, we’d be ready with the right things to say. But this is Peeta, always good with words and always able to see the finished sketch, whereas I struggle to see past the lines and shapes. And I find I am no more prepared with those magic words than I was in my dreams.

 

But I must try. I must try for my daughter.

 

“Haley says the Capitol has ways to get rid of scars,” she says. “Is that true, Mama?”

 

I nod, and gather her hair to begin the second braid. “They offered to do that for me,” I say. “But I didn’t want them to.”

 

“Daddy didn’t, either?”

 

Once again, she takes me by surprise, and I’m rendered temporarily mute. Peeta’s burn scars are somewhat faded now, smoothed over by time and mostly covered up by clothing or a constant dusting of flour, but they’re still there if you look closely enough. And it seems the girl has looked closely.

 

“No, he wouldn’t let them.”

 

When I finish with the braids, she turns to face me, eyes crinkled in a smile and the tiny dimples just below the corners of her mouth making their appearance. Without warning, she raises herself up on her toes and gives me a kiss on the cheek, letting her hands rest on my forearms.

 

“I’m glad you didn’t get them fixed,” she says.

 

My cheek still tingles where she kissed me. And inside, I feel my heart swelling, as if the only thing keeping it from bursting through my chest is my ribcage.

 

“You are?”

 

“Mm hmm. Because it shows how brave you and Daddy are, Mama.”

 

She pats my arm—right where the scar from Johanna’s knife wound is—as if to add emphasis, then she loops her arms around my neck and settles her cheek on my collarbone. The scent of her soap overwhelms me again, making my eyes water.

 

No, that’s not exactly why they water. I let out a slow exhale—carefully, so as not to alarm her—and wrap my arms around the small of her back, tightening the embrace. Her tiny body is warm and compact, and at this moment, I have to remind myself that she is still only a little girl, one who hasn’t seen the horrors I’ve seen, the horrors I pray she never has to see.

 

And I realize, I don’t have to have all of the answers. I don’t have to know the perfect thing to say when she asks me about the rest of it. When her brother begins to notice these things as well.

 

We will figure it all out together. 


End file.
